NAPOLEONIC EUROPE (1799-1815)
German
Nationalism and Romanticism Under French Rule
Though Napoleon's empire
remained politically intact, however, strains began to show. Napoleon's
conquest of Europe, the burdens of the Continental System and the British blockade,
and the high taxes Napoleon levied outside of France led to resentment and
resistance in many regions of the Empire. People were becoming tired of seeing
their nations used as pawns against the British. Thus, nationalism developed in
reaction to Napoleon's imperial reign.
The main site of
anti-Napoleonic nationalism was in the German states, some of which had been
absorbed by France, but most of which were in the Confederation of the Rhine.
The German nationalist movement rebelled not only against French rule, but
against the entire French intellectual tradition. The years of French
domination saw a remarkable flowering of thought and art in Germany, with
philosophers and artists such as Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Kant, Hegel, and
Beethoven rising to the fore.
Against the dominant
tradition of French Enlightenment Rationalism that underlay the entire
Napoleonic empire and its rules, German intellectuals now began a revolution in
thought called Romanticism. Romanticism challenged nearly every aspect of
French Rationalism. Since the French Empire was built on French Rationalism,
the policies of the empire came under attack. The Enlightenment idea of
universal laws that applied to everyone came under attack.
J.G. Fichte, who drew on
the work of J.G. Herder(discussed in Commentary, below) was a German
philosopher and Romantic who argued that each person's inner self determined
their morality. In 1800, Fichte proposed a "Closed Commercial State",
advocating a centralized state that could isolate itself from the world to
develop its own volksgeist, a
word describing a nations distinct sense of self. When Germany fell under
French domination, Fichte argued (like Herder) that there was a special German
"spirit". Unlike Herder, Fichte claimed that the German spirit was
better than that of other nations, and for that reason, it needed to be
carefully protected from being perverted by contact with outside influences,
such as the French influence.
Thus, Napoleon's domination
of Germany helped propel both a political and intellectual reaction, fueling
the growth of German Nationalism and Romanticism.
Commentary
Before the Napoleonic era,
Germany had never had much of a national identity; it consisted only of the
loose grouping of states united only by a common language, vague cultural ties,
and the weak government of the Holy Roman Empire. The envy inspired by French
power instilled in the Germans a desire to revitalize their own political
system and to gain a unifying national consciousness. Politically, the French Revolution
demonstrated to the Germans the power of nationalism to mobilize people. The
liberal reforms of the French Revolution led
to a more efficient French system and a more patriotic French population. As
seen in the reforms of Prussia, the Germans followed suit. Socially, French
domination of culture and thought created a sense in Germans that they needed
to construct their own sense of nationalism. Many Germans emerged from
Napoleonic rule tired of the petty kingdoms and principalities that made up the
Holy Roman Empire, and they hoped for a unified state. For the most part, they
looked for leadership to Prussia, a modernizing state on the eastern fringes of
what at this time was the traditional "German" heartland (described
in more detail next section.
The nationalism that
developed in reaction to Napoleon usually took one of two tracks. In some
cases, it was a conservativenationalism,
a desire to go back to the old ways that prevailed before Napoleon took over
and started making reforms. On the other hand, there was also aliberal nationalism. Napoleon
brought European countries some of the fruits of the French Revolution, but
some people wanted more: they wanted true self-government. Amazingly, opposite
approaches, liberal and conservative, worked in tandem to oppose Napoleon's
rule.
Romanticism and German
Nationalism both have their roots in the work of J.G. Herder. In 1784, he
published Ideas on the Philosophy
of the History of Mankind, in which he suggested that every nation
was different, and that every nation had its own particular specialty (of
"genius"). By this logic, Germany should not copy France, but pursue
its own particular national genius and identity. Herder invoked the Volk (the people) as the root of
the true national culture and special nature (Volksgeist) which every nation should try to express. Herder did
not mean his ideas to apply only to Germany, but to all nations. Herder's ideas
were radically at odds with ideas of Enlightenment philosophes like Voltaire who believed that all nations
would follow similar paths of progress from barbarity to civilization, though
at different rates. Herder's ideology of differences in national Volksgeist from country to
country would spread throughout Europe, counter to the French idea that all
countries and peoples are basically the same and would benefit by the same
kinds of "progress". Ideas such as what constituted "good"
art or literature were challenged, because art might not apply to everyone in
the same way. By Herder's way of thinking, art was good only inasmuch as it
represented a particularVolksgeist. The
implication of this way of thinking is that the concept that there were certain
good universal laws, a cornerstone of the French Revolution, was challenged in
Germany.
Britain was also strongly
swept by anti-Napoleonic nationalism. The years of Napoleonic rule were also
crucial years in the development of British manufacturing through the
Industrial Revolution. British workers were being horribly exploited, working
long hours at monotonous and dangerous jobs for little pay. Unemployment was
high. A workers' revolt might well have happened if the British people hadn't
had Napoleon to rally against. Opposition to Napoleon unified Britain, and may
be one factor explaining why workers didn't revolt against the factory system
in this still early, fairly oppressive stage of the Industrial Revolution.
Two exceptions to the
general rule that French dominance created local nationalism were Italy and the
Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The Italians, lacking a unified history and broken into
several states under Napoleon, never developed a strong anti-Napoleon
nationalist movement. The Poles were also quite happy with their new, restored
state. Even if it wasn't really independent, at least they had a state, rather
than being split up and controlled by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, which was
what would likely happen if Napoleon hadn't been supporting the Grand Duchy.
REFERENCE
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Chapman, Tim. The
Congress of Vienna : Origins, Processes and Results. Routledge: 1998.
Durant, William James, et al. The Age of Napoleon: A History of
European Civilization from 1789 to 1815. Simon
& Schuster: 1975
James, Cyril Lionel Robert. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint
L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. 2nd ed. Vintage Books: 1989.
Rothenberg, Gunther E. Art of Warfare in the Age of
Napoleon. Indiana University
Press: 1981.
Tone, John Lawrence. The Fatal Knot: The Guerilla War in
Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain. University of North Carolina Press:
1994.
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